RESOLUTION ON THE SOVIET UNION
Decomposition of
bureaucratic regime
and struggle for
socialist democracy
1. A world turning point and the end of an era : THE EVENTS that have shaken up the USSR and Eastern Europe repreer: a major turn in the century that is drawing to a close. Gorbachev's poli•* de facto initially fed the new waves of revolt against the most :*servative regimes (from China to Czechoslovakia, passing by the ex:OR) and put an end to fears of a Soviet intervention. But his answers *ered no coherent project for getting out of the crisis and for resistance to he logic of capitalism. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the death throes of the - =y/State in the East European countries in turn deepened the economic cri:. precipitated the collapse of the "socialist camp" and the dynamic of dislo:con in the USSR, the Warsaw Pact and CMEA (Comecon). The world *der that developed out of Stalinism and the Yalta accords is coming to an =d. Many possibilities are opened up on the basis of the initial victories șainst the bureaucratic dictatorships and the popular energy that was thus serated.
:: But this crisis has not led to the development of a mass self-organization - *ement attempting to challenge bureaucratic waste through democratic • al control of the means of production and distribution. Subjectively, there
50 International Marxist Review are widespread and deep doubts about the very possibility of challenging capitalism. In relation to this, there is not only a crisis of Stalinism, nor even of its identification with socialism: in the eyes of many, within the workers' movement itself, it is the October Revolution and the idea of socialism that are in question.
The collapse of East European states that is taking place confirms Trotsky's judgement about the mortal danger that a confrontation with world capitalism would represent if gaps in productivity and growth tended to widen instead of closing (as they did by and large until the middle of the 1970s).
The socio-economic degradation in the USSR and most of the East European countries during the 1980s, the failure of the reforms of the 1960s and 1970s and of perestroika today, the deepening of bureaucratic chaos in the face of the crisis while capitalism is going through total technological change, the absence of a credible socialist alternative in the various countries and on a world scale — all this tends to push popular hopes towards free-market answers. These have an even stronger power of attraction in that they appear to bring together anti-bureaucratic radicalism, efficiency and democracy. We also have to take full account of the negative political impact on the younger generations all over Eastern Europe of twenty years of "normalization" by Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia, the bureaucratic repression shown by the Chinese and Vietnamese regimes, disillusionment with the Cuban regime and the absence of a victorious socialist revolution in the developed capitalist world. In short, of the absence of positive and credible global socialist references. The failure of the anti-capitalist and anti-bureaucratic movements in 1968 in Czechoslovakia, as in Yugoslavia, resulted in a reversal of consciousness. The scope of the workers' mobilization and Solidarnosc's self-management aspirations meant that we underestimated the scope of the ideological disarray that existed.
The working class remains the only force having the potential to resist capitalist restoration but that does not mean it has the means to do so in each case. A too "objectivist" an approach can lead to under-estimating all the political and social factors which bear down on the consciousness of the working class, and therefore on its capacity for mobilisation: above all the relationship of forces between classes (and therefore the credibility of socialist responses) , the accumulation of past experiences (and disillusionments), the deep discrediting of socialist ideas linked to Stalinism. The problem cannot be reduced to the absence or weakness of revolutionary Marxist organisations for this weakness is itself the product of this whole relationship of forces which, for example, today leads the workers of the ex-GDR to think that only
Bureaucratic decomposition and struggle for socialist democracy 51 :.edits and capitalist methods can lead their country out of the crisis. Experience changes and will change consciousness; in Germany it is already procucing a more realistic vision of the effect of capitalist unification; and new Euggles in the USSR and Eastern Europe are beginning to express resisance to market mechanisms. There is also distrust and resistance to free mareet (liberal) recipes, disillusion is and will be rapid, but is in any case : pressed in the immediate by deep disarray and openness to populist nation_ist chauvinist reactions faced with the dead end of free-marketism. The general popular perception is that outside capitalism there are in fact no : herent responses
Such is the essential difficulty with which we, as well as all socialist forces, =e confronted and which compels us to take on the specific tasks of elaborat=g new tactical and programatic answers.
The pressures for capitalist restoration occur in a radically new and instable ::erational context. The conditions of restoration are not the same in Ger-any as in the rest of Eastern Europe or in the USSR. There is a considerable *stance between the projects, the legal measures going in this direction and : amplete restoration. We should make a precise study of these different cuations.
This should make it possible to develop further theoretical discussions on =e brueaucracy, on the nature of these systems, and countries in deep turmoil riause of the process underway of integration into the capitalist world mar• et and on the question of capitalist restoration (its concrete process, its qualative leaps, the symmetries and dissymmetries of the revolution and : gunter-revolution).
31 For now, it is the bourgeoisie rather than social democracy that has *caped the ideological benefits of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the ruling : ammunist parties. Economically, capitalism will have much more difficulty :. benefiting to the extent it hoped from this crisis. For all that, these events represent a general extension of capitalism's sphere of influence and profits, _d bigger capacities for imperialist military intervention in so-called regioni conflicts in the third world. Il. From market reforms to capitalist restoration
1) The fact that a substantial section of the bureaucracy at different levels :: the state apparatus, the Party and the economy has gone over to a pro- apitalist position is due to the deepening crisis of legitimacy of the bureauratic regime. It confirms the fragility of its roots and the impasse of the
reforms it has attempted in order to save its skin. It underlines the specificity
2) The bureaucracy as a whole represents a heterogeneous but privileged social category, ruling in a non-capitalist society on the back of the workers in their name. The mechanisms of parasitic exploitation and the relationships of collaboration/antagonism between bureaucrats and workers developed
Within a basically non-market system, transgressing the law of value on a long-term basis. After the Stalinist counter-revolution, this regime was able to extend and prolong itself for several decades thanks to several historic fac-
• The ambiguous characteristics of World War II ending in the defeat of fascism by the conflictual alliance of Stalinism and bourgeois anti-fascists:
even though there was capitalist growth after the war, it had to take account of socialism's power of attraction. An offensive against the USSR would not have paid off either politically or militarily, and the Marshall Plan offered essential crutches for rebuilding a West Europe (and a Germany) that was profoundly weakened; reciprocally, the anti-fascist victory legitimized Stalin and the ruling CPs in the East European states. This "justified" the imbalances in heavy industry and the massive effort for Soviet industrialization.
• The political and economic reforms since Khrushchev in turn suppressed the most bloody aspects of Stalinism, improved consumption, fed waves of hope for socialist reformation (until 1968), gave a bigger margin of maneuver to the bureaucracy and the single party (particularly in Yugoslavia and
Hungary, which in turn represented future poles of reference for reform cur-
• At the same time, the partial advance of the colonial revolution put impe-
3) It was the impasses of hyper-centralization and the desire to try to resolve the difficulties of its own government that has led the bureaucracy, up to and including Gorbachev, to fall back for several decades on market reforms and openings to the world market - and not the goal of restoring
There were two types of pressures for reforming the system: discontent from below and the growing constraints on world trade (ever stronger in
Eastern Europe, weaker in the USSR, which was subject to Cocom rules imposed by imperialism, limiting its direct exchanges with capitalism and
In this spiral of advances and retreats of reforms (that the East European
52 International Marxist Review tors, in particular:
rents elsewhere).
rialism on the defensive.
capitalism.
reinforcing its autarchic characteristics).
of previous mechanisms of bureaucratic domination.
--
Bureaucratic decomposition and struggle for socialist democracy 53 • intries and the USSR have experienced to various degrees for several dec.:. the bureaucracy has always had different responses to social resistance - -nd three central questions: challenges to the right to work, price changes - : tage differentials, which the market reforms engendered. It is this resis-ie. exploited by the wings of the bureaucracy threatened by the reforms, .'.ch have periodically produced re-centralizing tendencies, even if it = ame increasingly difficult for the central powers to control their own - minery.
- though growth rates remained positive overall until the end of the 1970s • = some exceptions), growing inefficiency increased both foreign debt in
480s and pressures from the world capitalist market's law of value. Aus- policies demanded by creditors opened up an era of sharper izations. • While the restorationist pressures expressed in previous reforms -ined restrained and marginal, the end of the 1980s marked an historic --. the predominant dynamic of the new projects for opening up to the mar:.: no longer to combine in a conflictual way a central plan and the appeal * artial market mechanisms in the framework of unchanged (nationalized)
certy relations. Neither is it introducing or using the market to enlarge antralized rights for workers' self-management as was the case in Yugo.. a in the 1960s, but also in nearly all East European countries at the end te 1980s, on the model of the law on enterprises voted in the USSR in ..- For the first time, currents coming out of the pro-free market opposi-
•. Joined by chunks of the bureaucracy, favoured the reintroduction of the ..: market and capital, against any sort of workers' self-management = in a process restoring capitalist private property. The explosion of plu- in. the challenge to and fall of the Party/State in turn precipitated the eco- crIsIs: the old machinery of the "command" system has lost the little •exon the nomenklatura system gave it. The material advantages that the • taucracy got out of it are no longer guaranteed. The ethos of everyone for =- elves is developing, increasing the chaos with an overall restorationist : The bureaucrats who turn to capitalist restoration hope to derive their eges of office from a new state power to which they are ready to sell * services, or, better still, to transform them into privileges convertible
-aney and property. Their only logic is to have the whip hand (so as to = defend their material interests). These bureaucrats accentuate the resto- dynamic in the face of the impasse of hybrid reforms in a non-
54 International Marxist Review capitalist system, because they are both aimed at benefitting from the various forms of exploitation of the workers.
But restoring capitalism will not be easy — and neither will finding a job. That depends on the positions occupied previously, and therefore on how easy reconversion will be. So, for pragmatic reasons, there will also be antifree market conservatism and all kinds of variants of neo-communism or self-labelled "socialists" emerging from the crisis of the CP/States. In other words, it is because, on the one side, the bureaucracy is not a homogeneous and coherent category and, on the other, because capitalist restoration will be difficult that we will see political and social polarizations in the old apparatuses. If workers' resistance develops, many of the trade-union and political currents from the old system will try to exploit them in order to conserve their own material advantages. Particularly as, in many cases, such resistance will be sufficiently strong to resist the logic of capitalism, but not strong enough to impose a socialist, anti-bureaucratic alternative. So it is, and will be, more tempting to develop anti-capitalist populism or workerism that combines — or will eventually be a substitute for — yesterday's "communist" ideology with more or less dictatorial chauvinist nationalism, adorned with an austere and patriotic morality.
6) Although the pro-capitalist pressure is felt in all the East European societies and the USSR, the conditions have to be studied case by case, particularly as the early experiences will affect reactions elsewhere. The assimilation of the ex-GDR in a unified capitalist Germany is specific (the existence and strength of the German bourgeoisie and capital, of a strong state; the national question increasing the attractive and credible character of economic assimilation: there were many factors favouring a rapid and peaceful restoration process, even if it will not be implemented without problems). The East German Länders are going to be the poor regions of a great power (with its positive effects); but for all the other countries the major risk is taking the Latin American road.
7) After the initial euphoria, the dominant tone of the bourgeoisie today is scepticism and prudence. The last few months of 1990 have seen a massive movement to withdraw private loans from the USSR or Eastern Europe. Privatization has not really begun anywhere in relation to industry (even in East Germany, bankrupt enterprises are not finding buyers).
Capitalist restoration is in fact coming up against the crisis itself (on both sides) and the nature of the societies ruled by bureaucratic dictatorship; they
Bureaucratic decomposition and struggle for socialist democracy 55 ack a bourgeoisie. Many bureaucrats are proposing themselves for the job.
But the money available for capital is tiny in relation to the means of producon that could be privatized. It is concentrated in the hands of a nomenklatu-
*i - indeed, in the USSR, a detested, criminal and speculative bureaucratic
-afia. This shows to what point privatization in its favour will not appear as egitimate", and even less as efficient: scandals about "wild" privatization avouring former bureaucrats have broken out in Hungary and led to cancel-
¿tions, as well as to the introduction of structures of state control. But these
-easures go against the current ultra-liberal free market logic of state
There are hardly any peasants who are ready to turn themselves into kulaks.
-he trauma of the past is one of the reasons for this, but not the essential one:
te aspiration for a certain level of social security, the loss of peasant tradi-
..ens (except partially in the Baltic republics) and deepgoing ideological
: ansformations in a population that is hostile (above all in Russia) to private
-anchment play a more important role. For the small producers or the work-
Free-market currents lack a social base. For reasons of the relationship of seces, they have to find themselves a legitimacy: it is simple while the Sta-
-ist parties remain the target. When the first objective is reached all the difculties suddenly spring up. They therefore try to legitimize privatization rong workers through workers' shareholdings (explaining, moreover, that
- chis way workers can have power under capitalism...). Some even propose
-ack bottom prices or free distribution. But what is the good of owning shares
:: unprofitable companies if it is only to be forced later to accept austerity sticies and the risk of redundancy. It is probably a better bet to buy housing
As for foreign capital, this has been viewed ambiguously (both as a possi-
= = solution to all the economic problems, and as a threat to sovereignty). But
*e essential fact is that it is not rushing into economies as run down as these
• th unstable situations and without the network of market relations indissensable for the functioning of capitalist enterprises. On a world scale, the
-ass of capital available for productive investment is small. The profitability
:: an investment is uncertain or risks being long-term and dubious in Eastern
E-rope and the USSR. The best deals are and will be the most speculative,
..?se which mobilize the least capital. The state guarantees hoped for by erders are subject to the instability of the regimes in power and the conflicts er sovereignty, particularly in the case of the USSR and Yugoslavia, uS b. OW Itior ner uS be racal ve Ice ng vill hat 1uled 1earion and nal niion reISitin y is ive Prilast oth hey
-sengagement.
-e peasants of the kolkhoz, free-marketism is no solution.
- convert savings into hard currency.
56 International Marxist Review between different state structures.
8) Not all the free-market governments established will have the benefit of certain honeymoon period as there was in Poland— and even there this breathing space was only very provisional. The scenario of restoration is to use changes in government to begin to transform the nature of the state and the economy. But the old regimes have made the masses impatient with promises of a better future.... Impatience for a better life brought down the Berlin Wall. Tangible results are needed to calm tensions. We have entered an era of great instability where the transformation of the nature of states is at stake.
Changes in government and challenges to Stalinist institutions are the "easiest" objectives to attain because they stem from a broad social consensus. Juridical changes to property have not yet been stabilized. Police, administrative or military forces that could be counted on to support the thoroughgoing application of a free-market policy have yet to be established.
Privatization and state disengagement are the current recipes of the International Monetary Fund. But if these lead to a dead end, the institutions of the world bourgeoisie could prefer to finance a variant of state capitalism, marked initially by the maintenance of a dominant public sector and a strong state responsible, along with foreign capital, the updating of infrastructures, and preparing for privatization at a later stage. III. The crisis in the USSR 1) This is a socio-economic, political, ideological and moral crisis affecting all the mechanisms that have ensured the rule of the bureaucracy since Stalin. At each stage of its rule, the bureaucracy has tried to give legitimacy to its power: on the one hand ideologically, through references to the October Revolution and Lenin, to the "Homeland of socialism" besieged by all its enemies; then with the glorification of Soviet (and above all Russian) patriotism in the struggle against fascism; then Khrushchev's promise of communism in 1980... And, on the other hand, on the socio-economic level, basing itself on job security and a mediocre but regular improvement in the standard of living until the middle of the 1970s. It is impossible to understand either the life-span of the bureaucracy, or the existence in the USSR of a "popular" neo-conservatism that refuses any denigration of the past, or the world impact that "Soviet socialism" had, if its history is simply reduced to murderous and unchanging Stalinism, and to "socialist" propaganda uniquely founded on lies. Neither must the real degra-
Bureaucratic decomposition and struggle for socialist democracy 57 an of the system in the last decade obscure an understanding of this past.
The structural trend towards stagnation undermined all these pillars of • aucratic domination. Gorbachev wanted to play a new card to find the -es of a new legitimacy. To start with, his role in initiating the reforms wid.** his room for manoeuvre. But then the dynamic of the movements from =*. stimulated by the reforms, the growing glasnost around Stalin's - -es and the damage caused by the "command system" ', and, finally, the - rization itself of the economic mechanisms of the market, all turned -st him. They are deepening an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy of •reaucratic rule, combined with an identity crisis of the society itself.
: The reforms were initiated by the "enlightened" wing of the central polit- Apparatus conscious of the fact that "stagnation" would lead to an explo-
÷ crisis that would universally threaten bureaucratic power.
-ersions increased at the end of the 1970s. The crisis of détente increased
*amal pressure for the arms race. At the same time, the deployment of new :.*=ologies by world capitalism deepened the lagging behind of the USSR's rictive capacities. Although oil revenues eased the impact of the crisis • arief period, the fall in of raw materials' prices had a big impact on the ::R as a gross exporter, provoking a similar reduction in its import capaci-
-hat is, on all fronts there was a worsening of the system's incapacity to • (qualitatively and quantitatively) the needs stimulated by the regular *ease in distributed income and level of qualifications, at the same time as = moral crisis deepened. There was more and more direct pressure in favour of reforms emanating -•. qualified layers of the apparatus, in the broad sense, and from a section
== intelligentsia. The new social weight acquired by these layers in the i was reinforced by the need to turn towards new technologies. But the - motion of these "competent" categories was blocked by Brezhnevian con:. ism. After a whole period of support for "Gorbachevism" , they became .cincipal breeding ground of the radical free-market current. -= era of reforms started with Andropov and the search for a more effec-
: recentralization (plans for more direct links between enterprises and the :-e.. support for the material participation of workers' brigades for rein- =g discipline). But in particular they came up against the so-called "egal-an" logic of workers on the one hand, and the different cliques and - - as proliferating in the heart of the nomenklatura in the ministries and the *inal apparatuses of the republics on the other. Developing under Brezh•= in conservatism with their network of clientelism and their fraudulent
58 International Marxist Review appropriation of social funds, they have increasingly undermined the capacity for centralized control of the economy. At the same time, they have been a deformed reflection of the growing autonomization of republican powers. By wanting to purge these local mafias from above, to the benefit of Russian cadres (notably in the Asiatic republics), Gorbachev came into a head-on clash with the national sentiments of the peoples concerned.
The reform projects have been differentiated (more or less appeals to political and market liberalism) since Andropov under the pressure of the resistance met and the imbalances produced. Gorbachev, Ligachev and Yeltsin pragmatically parted ways, personifying the evolving responses in the same apparatus in the face of the scale of the growing crisis.
3) Like the reforms attempted previously and in other "socialist" countries, Gorbachev's project aims at perpetuating the bureaucracy's rule by making it more efficient (combining purges, restructuring and appealing to certain decentralizing market mechanisms). But the combination of perestroika and glasnost is distinguished from other experiments by its political dimensions. Internally, as internationally, they are aimed at facilitating the introduction of market reforms by enlarging the political and material "credit" of the central regime. This political dimension explains Gorbachev's impact on a substantial section international workers' movement, where he was seen as initiating a renewal and democratization of "really existing socialism". This is also why the so-called "informal" organizations, the first forms of independent organization in the USSR, and the national fronts in Armenia and the Baltic republics, if not in Ukraine, in their initial phases supported glasnost and perestroika, against the conservatives.
The Gorbachev team did indeed differentiate itself from the Ligachev wing, given the obstacles that were accumulating, by trying to reduce the strength of the conservatives in the apparatus through a limited appeal to social forces external to this apparatus. From this flowed the importance given from above to glasnost, to reestablishing certain historical truths, to slogans for autonomy and self-management, and to a controlled "reactivation"' of bureaucratized and powerless soviets. The redefinition of state and Party functions, the establishment of a "state of law" (that is, a state based on law), was aimed at reconciling the contradictory objectives of a regime of a single bureaucratic party wanting to liberalize itself without allowing socialist democracy. These contradictory objectives include: both legalizing and controlling private initiative; giving the regime a political and moral legitimacy by protecting citizens from bureaucratic arbi-
Bureaucratic decomposition and struggle for socialist democracy 59
-iness and by according certain freedoms, but in return protecting bureau-
-ats from "uncontrolled" social initiatives. Thus, when there is a discussion
::. legalizing strikes there is also a limitation on having them; the right to demonstrate is granted, but along with many restrictions.... The same goes
::: national rights, strictly limited in the first projects of the Union while consuing to affirm the principles of autonomy and economic decentralization.
Tra principle of the (renovated) "leading role" of the (restructured) single
FEty has remained at the heart of the system of defence of bureaucratic inter-
*is as long as control of the rank-and-file movements has remained possible.
Despite the public disagreements, the rule that the Central Committee was
But the reforms "from above" and their appeal for initiatives against
: -reaucratism have favoured the development of movements "from below"
- rich, after having supported the reforms, systematically went much further.
The dynamic of the reforms, politically and economically, is going to be
4) The emergence of a plurality of platforms organized in the CPSU, the de acto affirmation of political pluralism for the elections, the growth of worker struggles and social discontent due to material degradation and the standall of the reforms and the explosion of monolithism in the East European
•untries have profoundly modified the situation at the beginning of the
3) The CPSU is no longer the sole framework where various strategies conront each other: it broke up on the one hand on the basis of national fractures
"to as many parties as republics, more or less looking for a base in the rationalist movements. On the other hand, the conservative and liberal currents made etforts to find a mass hearing outside the party (for the conservasires, the Russian Workers' United Front, Inter-fronts in the Baltic republics;
:or the liberals, the Russian Democratic Front). Finally, a multitude of parties
-ave begun to spring up without any of them being in a position to challenge he CPSU for the moment. In this context, the abandonment of the Article 6 introduced by Brezhnev to consolidate "the leading role of the party"
imposed itself on its own. But more and more conflicts if not a sort of dual ower is developing between the party machinery and that of the soviets, many of which are falling to the control of the "liberals". There is a general b) The liberals have speeded up their restorationist course. They are joined
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60 International Marxist Review conflicts with the apparatus and his past speeches against privileges; second the proclamation of sovereignty for a Russian Federation that up until then did not exist, thus scoring points both with Russian nationalists who correctly denounced the non-existence of institutions representing the Russian people, and with non-Russian liberals and nationalists who saw in it a legitimization of their own proclamations of sovereignty or independence. Among other things, they saw in it a radical weakening of the powers of the "Centre" with the possibility of direct negotiations between republics around reciprocal terms and relationships. Thirdly, the radical free-market speeches appeared to be a response to the maintenance of the status quo. The liberals, like the conservatives, will pay for the expereince of power with the loss of popular illusions.
c) The national and social movements now go beyond all the limits fixed at the centre. The "full powers" that Gorbachev gave himself are going to come into open confrontation with the sovereignty proclaimed by the republics and the tendency to increased independence for regions, towns and even enterprises, with a growth of social and national exasperation both against the centre and against its paralysis (the demand for a strong hand to restore "order" and the reproach made that Gorbachev is too hesitant illustrates a certain popular ambiguity...).
• Whether a question of independence or sovereignty, it is the articulation between federal and republican powers that is radically overthrown by the republics. They are increasingly confronted at the same time by close economic interdependence linking them together and the problems they will face in relation to the world market, and finally with proclamations of sovereignty of their own minorities possibly seeking protection from the Soviet Federation against oppressive governments in the republics.
d) Generally, the change in the enterprise law in June 1990 represented an abandonment of the initial characteristics of perestroika and its diversion in a liberal, free-market direction: its logic became privatization and management rights dependent on share holdings, to the detriment of the initial (although limited) powers given to workers' collectives. The wish for Western credits has not been negligible in this evolution, which also reflects the growing support from a section of the intelligentsia and the apparatus for restorationist projects. But this will inevitably give the control of the market to mafia-type forces who are using cooperatives to launder and extend the funds previously accumulated. In addition, the growing chaos rather calls for centralist survival measures and makes the recourse to automatic market functioning increasingly difficult and the source of uncontrollable explosions.
Bureaucratic decomposition and struggle for socialist democracy 61
• Initially, the "radicals" — including in the presentation of their "500 programme of "transition to a market economy" — kept a demagogic - gage (Yeltsin, like Walesa, promised well-being for everyone straight . *=. with the market and privatization). But the identification between lib-market reform and democracy is being increasingly openly challenged • -porters of a strong-arm solution for imposing the market. They now - come decisive institutional support at the level of the soviets in several
•-: and republics. The population seems very torn between fear of changhe worse and exasperation with the current impasse. • --is unstable situation is reflected in Gorbachev's persistent hesitations - •*n the different variants of the reforms, and the ultimate recourse to ::ids of direct control beyond formally-proclaimed financial autonomy.
tal. the project of bureaucratic reform with a "human face" has failed, ::atrist base of support for Gorbachev has collapsed his room to manoeu•: cetween conservatives and radical liberals still derives from the weak= e of their projects but these are more attempts to manage the disorder ... etorms. His recourse to the party apparatus within the KGB and the - : :0 maintain the power of the centre against the chaotic breaking up of .: nion is on a far from firm basis, so deep is the crisis of the whole sys-
Repression could be used by different forces present, from neomists to supporters of capitalism. The liberal pseudo-democrats would
: appose the use of repression in the cases where it would aim to maintain *: *armer regimes. Only mass resistance could prevent a recourse to force to -? out the developing social and national conflicts. : it ith the miners' strike, the Soviet working class has had its first experi• = of self-organization that will mark future struggles. Independent = upments of workers on a socio-political or trade-union level that have • plied on various levels, sporadic local actions against the bureaucratic ames and the massive participation in the elections and national fronts — *ale are all manifestations of a major political awakening. But there are no :?endent organizations putting forward coherent programmatic responses %.:an allow them to avoid the false counterposition that is continually pre- ed: neo-conservatism adopting a class-struggle language or free-market *rilism with its radical anti-bureaucratic discourse. Our central task in the SR is to help to break this false counterposition. It is to support all the arrences and steps towards self-organisation of the workers, however .șie. confused and embryonic they may be, as much on the trade union lev* en that necessary for forms of self-management as a response to the
62 International Marxist Review
5) Major differences continue to distinguish the situation in the USSR and that in other East European countries (socio-economic weight of the proletariat, the historical roots of the October revolution, decades of autarchy and the size of resources, the depth and duration of bureaucratic crystallization, with its criminal ramifications incarnated by the mafia, etc.). But the characteristics of the overall crisis also affect the USSR and deflect the dynamic of the reforms in a capitalist direction. At the same time, the difficulty of restoration — and therefore the polarizations inside the bureaucratic apparatus — are bigger in the USSR than elsewhere. This is what gives Gorbachev's "centralist" role a margin for pragmatic expression, but he appears increasingly paralyzed between the only coherent alternatives: capitalist restoration or socialist democracy.
We are now in a stage of chaotic decomposition of the old power structures which could last because capitalist restoration in the USSR will be even more difficult than elsewhere, and those who put forward socialist answers are marginal for the time being. In relation to the growing chaos the major question marks concern workers' reactions on the one hand, and, on the other, all the possible variants of an intervention by the army (in a neo-Stalinist sense, or on the other hand with a Pinochet-type logic).
6) The Gorbachevite offensive has most rapidly overturned the image of the USSR inherited from the Stalin and Brezhnev periods on the international scene. Internal difficulties have lead to challenges to the arms race, to a systematic application of "peaceful coexistence" policy, to Soviet "disengagement" accompanied by an ideology of social compromise on a planetary scale. This has facilitated an historic rapprochement with social democracy and produced contrasting effects in the world. But a new era has been entered with the deepening of the crisis. Within it, the USSR has been reduced to the remains of its former self. The Kremlin's pretensions can no longer even be for peaceful coexistence between two systems, but a simple alignment with imperialist interests in order to obtain credits. The popularity of Gorbachev's new policy rested on the illusion that entente between governments of the existing systems can resolve the problems of peace, pollution and human rights. But the Gulf crisis shows that the inverse is true — it makes a policy of imperialist military intervention in so-called regional conflicts easier. As for credits, in turn they become a formidable means for the world bourgeoisie to intervene in the internal changes in the USSR, as in other East
Bureaucratic decomposition and struggle for socialist democracy 63 : zean and third world countries. -ee realization by the world bourgeoisie of the weakness of Gorbachev's - er and of the growing chaos unfavourable to a rapid profitability for for= investments made the Kremlin's relations with world capitalism more *42. Governments and investors began to develop direct relations with the * -blics (particularly the Baltic republics) bypassing a weak and contested **=. while assuring for themselves the possibility to continue or suspend *: conditional support for Gorbachev. The conservative currents in the : 5R exploit and will exploit all the negative social effects and all the uncer-tes of the opening to capitalism in order to at the same time challenge the tagy of the universal compromise at the international level. But the pos* = internal and external twists and turns of the Kremlin (with or without
-achev at the head) in a neo-conservative direction will be of the same .rtracratic nature as "Brezhnevian internationalism" without having any *er the base of a stable great power in the USSR. .•. Our programmatic positions •o overcome this crisis, socialist democracy is necessary • :: is crucial not to leave the defence of "formal liberties" to supporters of msm. The idea that "the dictatorship of the proletariat" can do without ...berties is a Stalinist and reactionary caricature of Marxism. Socialism • * built consciously, and this demands the broadest possibilities for self_zation and expression. No organization can pretend to incarnate alone ristorical interests of the working class", in so doing eliminating all : - and external "deviations". The Fourth International is thus deeply - red to the democracy of its own internal functioning (notably tendency =*. in respect for the democracy of mass organizations and in its project •wiciety. In the framework of its programme for Socialist Democracy, the as for the right to strike and the broadest democratic freedoms: politi- :ralism; freedom of the press, religion, association, of demonstration, cression, of independent trade-union and political organization; and - censorship and crimes of opinion. ..: herefore support all the struggles which go in this direction in the :. and which denounce the electoral manipulation de facto perpetuating ::Ery's monopoly of power. :.: society is not undifferentiated, nationally and socially. Socialist - cracy should be broader than bourgeois democracy and allow demohoices about all the essential aspects of daily life and the future. By
64 International Marxist Review penetrating productive activity, socialist democracy should make it possible to reunify the citizen and the worker. This is why we are for pluralist and generalized social control over all planning mechanisms, from production to distribution; decisions after a pluralist discussion and by referendum of the main priorities and criteria for distribution; and the development of selforganization of producers and consumers at local, sector and republic level. We therefore defend the need for a socialist transitional economy, combining democratic planning which ensure the carrying out in practice of the priorities for development and the overall balance, with the use of market and contractual mechanisms. The development of technology and work reorganization should make it possible to create a new logic of production subordinate to human needs. Social control and self-managment should then become the essential sources of a new economic efficieny subordinated to the richest social needs. Overcoming the former division of labour, work alienation because of the market and the state should make it possible to organize the life of society on the basis of communities of freely-associated producers/consumers.
Therefore those who are most directly threatened by a decision concerning them must have a power of veto in the framework of the functioning of the soviets. This should also be true for the republics (if they feel threatened by a federal choice) on the one hand, and for the workers on the other hand (where their working conditions are concerned, for example). Alongside territorial forms of representation through direct and universal suffrage, we are therefore also in favour of the nations and nationalities on the one hand and the workers on the other having specific forms of representation that they must decide. In any case, we support systematic plurality of candidates and the right of recall. After the traumatic experience of Stalinism, it is correct to attach particular importance to the elaboration and exercise of coherent legal rules and rights, protecting citizens against those in power, whoever they may be. Achieving these goals implies a real revolution which combines democratic and socialist tasks, national emancipation and social emancipation of the men and women concerned. Such a revolution aims for the overthrow of bureaucratic power and at the same time will have the essential social dimension because it will be a challenge to all forms of exploitation and oppression on which the bureaucracy based its privileges. b) Faced with the gravity of the situation, we are for emergency measures of control and protection: • That really free health services, childcare and schools be protected by the
Bureaucratic decomposition and struggle for socialist democracy 65
= ishment of workers' and users' committees of these services — particu- •omen; they should control their quality and determine at the level of - Soviet the necessary increases. • F: job security and job creation in publicly-useful works: rejection of all :..cion in employment without guaranteed reconversion at the same level
..Lification and wages — with income maintained during the period of
- ersion and compensation made in case of change of workplace. This .:be imposed, and must imply taking into account all the effects on the - : Effective establishment of a network of placement and retraining,
: he formation of specific committees of workers' control over reconver-
•. and adequate means allocated to the soviets. Protection of women's ment, against the fake free choice of return to the home, priority for ment in home-care services and products, re-evaluation of women's ... more skilled work for women. • Emination of prestige spending, of special shops for the nomenklatura bureaucratic privileges. Drastic reduction of military and administrasending. These resources to be allocated to an increaseof the lowest ÷ pensions and allowances — indexed to price rises. •: sing scale of wages against inflation. • : :ast campaign to make an inventory of all available resources and pro-
..:or reducing useless investments and wastage. - =* national question i inism and the national question • te USSR, a multi-national state, national oppression is one of the *=. of bureaucratic oppression, provoking the biggest mobilizations. * =ad above its cultural dimension, it poses the question of the level at .-zower is exercised: police, choice of investments, pollution, etc. - ism was accompanied by a national domination whose Great Russian -.. -ism was already denounced by Lenin shortly before his death. It grew * : during World War II with the consequences of the German-Soviet - and then with the repression and the deportation of entire peoples -..iti collectively of collaboration. The Russian component of the Soviet -*-iracy, seconded by the indigenous bureaucrats of the different repub-
•the USSR, constantly flouted the internationalist egalitarian principles :: Atober Revolution, favouring the guardianship of a "Russian bully". ...rse. this national oppression is only a specific aspect of the general sti• soviet democracy by the bureaucracy, from which the Russian toiling - - * also suffer. Moreover, and particularly since the death of Stalin, the
upswing in peripheral nationalisms in the USSR, in reaction to oppression, has been exploited by factions of the regional bureaucracies, no less corrupt than the Great Russian bureaucracy. Stalinism is not Russian in essence.
Nevertheless, the de facto privileges accorded to Russian language and culture, and the arrogant and chauvinist behaviour of the Great Russian bureaucracy on the basis of great power nationalism, are the fundamental cause of the current crisis in relations between the nationalities in the Soviet Union.
Together with the ideological, socio-economic and ecological misdeeds of the bureaucratic dictatorship, they explain the explosive dynamic of this
The Fourth International considers the rise of movements of the oppressed nationalities of the USSR as an essential factor in the general process of development of the self-activity of the Soviet masses. The national mass movements, which often started out by organizing around ecological questions, have been boosted by the calls for glasnost and autonomy launched by the reformers. They have sometimes found (at least to start with) support from a section of the reforming apparatus — itself evolving tactically on the basis of the popular strength of the movements and their dynamics.
The big mass movements of the non-Russian people have in the main expressed powerful democratic and anti-bureaucratic aspirations. The progressive demands that have been advanced can be classified into three main types: i) linguistic and cultural everywhere where the national language has been smothered; ii) socio-economic and ecological, challenging the bureaucratic choices of industries imposed from the centre; iii) political, denouncing Stalinist crimes against entire peoples after the war and, more generally, struggles in favour of the right to self-determination of nations and nationali-
But also developing are: i) pressures for capitalist restoration, particularly in the rich republics; ii) inter-bureaucratic conflicts likely to exploit the different nationalisms for reasons of local power; iii) fundamentalist currents, racist currents, as well as real pogroms sometimes practised by oppressed non-Russian nationalities themselves against their own minorities; iv) the
Pamyat movement, the extreme wing of old Slav, xenophobic, anti-Semitic,
The political (socialist) revolution will see the break up of the USSR as the rights. Understanding this is not to have any rose-tinted view of the national-
66 International Marxist Review crisis.
b) The present dynamic of the national struggles
Great Russian nationalism.
"prisonhouse of nations"
ties, for their sovereignty including the right to separation.
', and therefore the intransigent defence of national
Bureaucratic decomposition and struggle for socialist democracy 67
-ements: they are, like the social movements, necessarily marked by
* current crises and trends (and not only a progressive trend, even con- - minority nationalities).
• zositions i : clutionary Marxists fight for a world without frontiers, for the abolition
: ileges of all sorts, and for the integration of all nations into a world
- it democracy, where a common universal culture and all national and
•: cultures will flourish hand in hand. But achieving this supreme goal
= - 2: only demand the abolition of all national or linguistic privileges, and
- :arms of tutelage exercised over any national or ethnic group, but also
- =e-sation for all the centuries-old wrongs of national or racial oppres-
*: positive action in favour of oppressed nations and minorities, so as to
*e their emancipation in every sphere. Only then can there be strict :..?: between all nations, languages and ethnic groups.
.. sist planning itself has to be carried in a form that is controllable by
: concerned. In reality, it is much more compatible with the respect of
•- rights and identities than the invisible and totalitarian dictatorship of
- ziet. In particular, it can take into account differences in regional and
- - development in the choices of techniques and priorities. While we
•:.inced of the economic and cultural benefits of going beyond national
- i. it is more obvious than ever that such a process has to be controlled
*:: to be egalitarian and non-oppressive, both economically and cultu-
-he establishment of relations of mutual confidence between nationaliacuires that they be based on openness, reciprocal advantages and
:.. over the jointly-made decisions. Membership of a multi-national - Test be freely and democratically decided and freely reversible in order
••..:able, because socialism can only be built voluntarily. We therefore ..= =y bureaucratic dictatorship or economic pseudo-rationality (of the - :: the market) which would be imposed over the conscious choice of the .: ire therefore unconditional supporters of the right to self= — -ation, and therefore the right to a separate state while developing our .. scint of view that takes account of national, social and political ques-
• seir interaction and their context. We are opposed to any logic limit- -ers' self-organization: the anti-bureaucratic and democratic scope of •: onal movements will be measured by their capacity to stimulate and •*?.- the selt-organization of workers and citizens. We systematically •= sa fake proletarian internationalism in whose name the bureaucracy
68 International Marxist Review impedes this right to self-determination and represses national rights. We believe that the only way working people throughout the USSR can unite is by supporting the rights of oppressed nations and nationalities, particular! their right to independence. At the same time we fight against the illusion oi an independence which could exist in the framework of subordination to foreign capital. We understand this combined nature of the national and anti-bureaucratic revolutions, and act to advance both aspects simultaneously: This orientation distinguishes revolutionary Marxists from all other currents. whether of the left or the right, which invariably see the national struggle as in some way counterposed to the proletarian revolution.
• The diversity of national questions in the USSR means that there is no single answer — beyond sovereignty — to the question of the most suitable forms for defending the rights of each one. Furthermore, the perception of those concerned of what is the best framework evolves a great deal, depending on overall political conditions and historical differences. The deepening of the overall crisis of the economy and of Soviet power — not simply in the periphery but also in its Russian centre — are producing different effects: on the one hand it encourages abandoning the sinking ship and the oppressor state; on the other hand it offers new possibilites of redefining the links on the basis of new agreements between the governments of the newlyproclaimed sovereign republics. It is normal that in this context the choices are different even if the overall dynamic is that of challenging the powers of the centre. It is also clear that real antagonisms exists in the "rights" over the given territories, where history has meant that over time several nationalities have coexisted or succeeded each other. Socio-cultural problems that feed chauvinism have to be confronted, and the idea has to be accepted that many cases cannot be "simply" resolved by formulas. Their solution will involve finding compromises freely negotiated by those concerned, rejecting the oppression of one nationality by another. Finally, resistance to the negative effects of relations with world capitalism mean seeking different forms of non-capitalist economic union between the Republics and independent states which break in the USSR and elsewhere with the past "socialist model" and at the same time are threatened by the diktats of the IMF. In any case, the new links to be built between nations and nationalities could only be the foundation of a new internationalism if they were based on national rights. Socialism itself will remain a discredited project in the eyes of the populations of the USSR and the world as long as it remains identified with an oppressing power which imposes its decisions. That is why the FI unconditionally supports the right of self-determination
Bureaucratic decomposition and struggle for socialist democracy 69 i. oppressed nations, nationalities, and oppressed ethnic minorities in the :? — that is, their right to freely choose what links each will have with = cations and nationalities. It is for rooting out any vestige of oppressive
-st power. With this goal we fight for the full political and social devel*-== of democracy. This implies the self-organization of the workers in a •*.. of opposition to all bureaucratic manipulation, any form of Great i chauvinism and racism, for the respect for national rights — espefor minorities against any dynamic toward an "ethnically pure" state. -ing the maintenance of a compulsory union and of bureaucratic cen-
... we favour the full assertion of sovereignty — that is the possibility of ** aparation or free association as they choose — for all the nations and
-cities of the USSR. This is so even if the desire for separation is com:: • ith pressure for capitalist restoration. This question is just as unclear
:: copulations of the USSR as of Eastern Europe, who are open to prag..! changing positions when they see the effects of an unprotected we up to world market forces.
Factice, faced with the intervention of the Soviet armed forces in the
: Republics, the Fourth International unconditionally supports the
::the populations of these Republics — already confirmed by referen- - :o separate from the Soviet Union and their declaration of indepen-
: we oppose any attempt to prevent the exercise of that right, whatever *ement we might have with the existing nationalist movements or their :-ments in power. Military intervention by the Kremlin against the
- : movements blocks the essential clarification in each of the republics •: elevant social, economic and political questions. It is also an attempt
.. the first development of multinational resistance by the populations
: *ae of price increases. There will be no free choice without the with- . . : all troops from the Baltics and respect for the right of all the nations *-nalities of the Soviet Union to freely determine their own future and :.eations with other nations. This right of self-determination will be
:::mality if the nations and nationalities concerned continue to be subrepression, to the pressure and control of military and police forces or cressive administrative state apparatuses. This goes for the Baltic .... and for all other similar cases, faced with the central state of the
: and. at another level, for the minorities oppressed by the new republi?.. mars. such as the Ossetians in Georgia. * *ruggle on two fronts **=•-arket liberalism, which supposedly embodies the democratic strug-
70 International Marxist Review gle against the bureaucracy, is ready to ally itself with the mafias and will accept all kinds of foreign interference to impose the market. Its rule in the framework of privatization will mean big cultural and social setbacks. But such regressions cannot be fought by defending the old system. The right to work, education and free healthcare, housing for all and for the guarantee that society will satisfy all basic needs can only be defended by frontally attacking bureaucratic management in all its domains.
So there already is and will be two fronts of struggle: against regression linked to capitalist restoration (extolled by a section of the bureaucracy and world capitalism) and against whatever forms the old bureaucratic order takes refuge behind. The divisions between rich and poor regions risk confirming these two sorts of tendencies. Mixed up with this are national divisions exploited by different wings of the bureaucracy. "Left" and "right" labels are confused due to the very existence of these two axes of judgement: anti-bureaucratic (for pluralism, against all kinds of chauvinism) on the one hand; and anti-capitalist on the other. Reactionary components meet up along these two axes (pro-capitalist on the first; conservative bureaucratic and chauvinist on the second). The socialist left cannot fight on only one front without losing its progressive substance.
This is why the discussion has to be shifted: looking at what lies behind the market or the plan, cooperative or state-owned private property and foreign investments to see who decides, who controls what and to satisfy whose needs, which interests? This is why it is essential that there is the development of democratic mass self-organization for intellectual and manual, industrial and agricultural workers, men and women of all nationalities, in the workplaces and neighbourhoods, locally and regionally, on each autonomous territory and in each republic.
This is also the condition for the workers' interests not to be identified with the narrowminded and backward workerism used demagogically by neo-Stalinist currents : we want the values intrinsic to the working class — solidarity and egalitarianism — to grow from the anti-bureaucratic aspirations of all the oppressed (women, nationalities), ecological struggles, the highest possible cultural demands for qualifications, responsibilities and creativity that are not subordinated to mercenary interests.
If the fronts centred around fighting Stalinist institutions initially had a raison d'être, very rapidly it was the content and scope of democracy - that is, questions of democracy in the workplace and socio-economic choices — which came to the fore. Current developments reveal ever more clearly the naivety of identifying the market with democracy. There is therefore the
Bureaucratic decomposition and struggle for socialist democracy 71 * Ernings of a dissociation between those for whom the market is essential - : *ho are ready to impose it with an iron fist, and those for whom democ- essential, and who thought that the market was necessary to achieve it. —-= development of political pluralism will be essential for clarifying these
=èj. • Building the Fourth International to help build real workers' parties - day, in the USSR as in Eastern Europe we are seeing a proliferation of *arences of trial and error and provisional regroupments. The CPSU - =s a composite organization which must certainly explode and disap* i an instrument of the bureaucracy so that a real workers' party can be .: Such a party will have to struggle both against the bureaucracy and ---it a privatization that will be carried out on the backs of the labouring - - ies. for the unity of workers of all nationalities and for the intransigent .::a of national rights. It has to be capable of welcoming into its ranks all = i-tents that are ready to share these objectives in a democratic -= ork. - - ÷ existence in distinct currents of a socialist, pro-self-management intel::a - even if marginal and diversified — is a decisive potential for the -**. although we cannot predict their real capacity for influence. We must time the importance for the future of any beginnings of unity of these - in a democratic and self-management front against the alliance of **i. mafia and international capital, despite their currently marginal -ser. Their demand for full powers for the Workers' Collectives, local
::: and sovereign or independent republics puts the accent on the essen.. ..estion: who decides?
..Lism has to emerge from this crisis rehabilitated, redefined and
- ght out. It is possible and necessary, because it is the only emancipatoeat capable of responding to the crisis of the two really existing sys- But this will take time.
.: will go through the struggle for the whole truth about Trotsky, the Left icon and its fight, because it concerns the very history of the USSR,
*a pretation of Stalinism and, finally, the possibility of fighting it as a i.i. Those very same people who made Trotsky disappear from history .: yesterday reproached him for being opposed to Stalin by defending * sm. have reintroduced him in a new official history by presenting him ta tame as Stalin, if not that he would have been a worse dictator. Finally, - -timate variant, his merit in carrying out an intransigent and continu-
=-agle both against Stalin and capitalism has been recognized, but he is
72 International Marxist Review then reproached for having wanted a world revolution.... It is the same tirade that is aimed increasingly at Lenin, while reducing the October revolution from "Bolshevik voluntarism" to bloody excesses.
It will not be possible to resist falsifications without at the same time carrying out all the debates on the old and new questions posed. Alongside socialists from the USSR and Eastern Europe it is necessary to reconstitute the thread and the memory of history, to assess all the moments when choices were posed, where reorientations took place, where errors were committed. It is necessary to assess the scope of the global changes taking place and the stakes they imply. Finally, the socialist project has to be rethought by integrating into it all the richness of the debates of the 1920s in the USSR, all the experiences accumulated on a world scale and all the sensitivities of Stalinism's victims and the whole humanist scope of the fight for socialism. The Fourth International has already taken, and will take, a full part in these discussions. In the perspective of building sections in the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe, it wants to organize in its ranks all those who are ready to defend its programme and orientation. At the same time, they should be the animators of broad political or socio-political and trade-union regroupments, carrying out the struggle for the workers' and Soviet peoples' selforganization, against all oppression and for a society of democracy, justice and solidarity: for a socialist society.